Pizza Express Live approaching, Theatre Shows on the horizon and Raf and O Celebrate 20th Anniversary of Pennyblackmusic Live at The Water Rats
May 18, 2018 § Leave a comment
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We did it, we launched The Kick Inside – The Songs of Kate Bush project! Thank you to Kaparte Promotions! Here are the magical photos by Angelique Le Marchand capturing the night beautifully. We also had a wonderful time on the deXter Bentley Show, Resonance FM on the 40th anniversary of Kate Bush’s debut album. Listen to the podcast. Very grateful for the audience reception and the excellent reviews and blogs!
After such a great response, we are playing in London again, this time appearing at the legendary Pheasantry in Chelsea, Pizza Express Live on 1st June.
If you’ve missed the launch or fancy another dose of stripped down Kate Bush material, come down and spread the word, we’ll be waiting for you! x
TICKETS
FB EVENT
The show has also been booked at The Seagull Theatre, Lowestoft, Suffolk, at The Penny Theatre in Canterbury in the autumn and more to be confirmed
dates and tickets here
“Kate’s early songs performed like this make us want to be in some candlelit cabaret club in Paris or Berlin cosying up to a large glass of red in a plush velvet booth” Kate Bush News
“Alluring, atmospheric duo Raf and O launch their THE KICK INSIDE project – a beautifully realised, heartfelt re-imagining of a Kate Bush who kept on playing live…” Adrian Specs
“Utterly fantastic!” Dexter Bentley, London Resonance FM
“There’s a very real sense that Raf made these songs her own and created a Kate Bush persona in which to perform them. It takes a very special talent to bring this off: Raf possesses it and deployed it brilliantly last night” Jeremy Clarke Reviews
“I was blessed to attend the premiere of a performance of Kate Bush’s songs by Raf and O an experimental music duo” Peter Cook, Human Dynamics
In the meantime Raf and O “as themselves” shall also be playing live shows whilst putting finishing touches on the upcoming fourth album; we have been invited to be part of the excellent Pennyblackmusic Magazine 20th anniversary at The Water Rats, London (TICKETS); can’t wait to perform! And tonight, 18th May we are making a live appearance at Scaledown #139, The King and Queen, Fitzrovia, details on the Live page. There will be more special shows in the latter part of the year as we gear up towards our latest releases …..!
Watch/ Listen to the live video montage of the night we put together (below) from The KIck Inside Launch and then get your tickets for the Pheasantry or other dates here! Big thanks to Peter Cook, Katya Fowler, Lee Winter for phone footage.
Love
Raf and O X
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Gazing Ahead to The Space Between Nothing And Desire + Celebrating Kate Bush with The Kick Inside Launch and a Live Session on the DeXter Bentley Show
February 11, 2018 § Leave a comment
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It’s 2018 and we’re kicking off with live activities again!
Kate Bush has given music lovers something to treasure: a great musician and producer, a brilliant composer and an amazing most unique voice. This year and month marks the 40th anniversary of Kate and her debut album. Adopting their name from this album,TKI or The Kick Inside, a tribute to Kate Bush by Raf and O (see previous blog), perform tracks from her early albums fully live, elegantly and stylishly capturing the energy, excitement and fragility of Kate’s music on vocals, piano and double bass. Celebrating Kate, The Kick Inside Launch, promoted by the always excellent Kaparte, is in London at Bar & Co, the club on a boat, Temple Pier, on Sunday 25th February. It is also O Richard’s birthday and Raf, will keep celebration on hold till then.
‘We’ll be playing a full show of Kate’s beautiful songs from the early part of her career. Triple celebration. Come!’
The launch is also featured on Kate Bush News and TKI has been described as:
’Strikingly individual’ Kate Bush News
And to kick start it all off, The Kick Inside will be playing live in session on the mighty deXter Bentley Show on London’s Resonance 104.4 FM, Saturday 17th February, 12pm which is the date marking Kate’s debut album 40 years ago!
We’re now gazing ahead to … and we’re very excited to introduce ‘The Space Between Nothing And Desire’. That is the title of Raf and O’s new album and it’s set to be released later this year!
A slice from the album was aired yesterday for the very first time on the deXter Bentley Show: an edit preview of a brand new Raf and O song, ‘Your Gazing Stare’. The album will also include our version of David Bowie’s ’The London Boys’. We can’t say too much more at this stage, but keep your ears and eyes peeled, social media is always the quicker way to get fresh news!
Last November we even got to say thank you in person for the support Mike Garson had given to our version of Bowie’s Lady Grinning Soul back in 2013 after he played a magical show at the Camden Underworld!
Raf and O are now on Instagram too and we have unveiled a new logo, a moon-light reworking from our previous. Come and follow our new Instagram page here and here
See you down at THE KICK INSIDE LAUNCH. Come!
Raf and O Xx
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The Kick Inside – Kate Bush Tribute Live Outfit and Raf and O Tour in the pipeline
July 10, 2017 § Leave a comment
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The Kick Inside – Kate Bush Tribute (TKI)
Promo Shot and Still from Video – ‘Wuthering Heights’ ‘Wow’ & Teasers Live in the Warm Room
July greetings from Raf and O!
This year we’ve been very busy getting a new project off the ground:
The Kick Inside (TKI)!
This is an entirely separate music outfit, named after Kate Bush’s first album and it’s a tribute to the artist herself!
We’ve also been busy with Raf and O and you can read more on the latter part of this blog.
I’ve been doing a lot of piano playing recently on the latest and beautiful addition to the instrument roster: a lovingly converted piano keyboard by O featuring f holes!
Last May we announced it on our facebook page – As well as cracking on with writing material for our 4th album, and reinterpreting favourite artists, mainly David Bowie interpretations, I’m starting a tribute to the music of Kate Bush, where I will sing and play piano extensively, focusing on the early part of Kate’s career and this time, keeping faithful to the original pieces.
Since then we’ve got a new TKI page up and running and just over a week ago we released our very first video, recorded live in The Warm Room, which received a great reception.
Monolith Cocktail writes:
“Raf Mantelli one half of our favourite avant-garde and frayed experimentalist duo Raf and O adds her idiosyncratic, enchanting signature to the music of Kate Bush on her latest project, The Kick Inside. Concentrating on Bush’s early career, the focus being on her ‘core essence as a pianist singer songwriter’, The Kick Inside tribute band will soon be announcing dates for a number of performances. In the meantime, here’s a teaser” Monolith Cocktail
The Kick Inside, as well as the solo show, will also perform as a duo and here, O will be alongside me but in a role that may be a surprise for many amongst you.
THE KICK INSIDE LINKS
TKI page
TKI Facebook
TKI Twitter
TKI Youtube Channel
CONTINUES BELOW
In the meantime…
Raf and O will return to Italy to play a small series of shows and look forward to go back to some favourite places during the tour! We will debut some new material and there will be a few surprises along the way too! Already looking forward to seeing friends old and new and very excited about the set we will be playing!
As well as developing the TKI project we’ve been also writing material toward a new album; this has been keeping us focused in the studio, so it was lucky if you managed to catch Raf and O playing earlier this year including the legendary experimental Klinker Club and a charity show to raise awareness on mental health for Punk4MentalHealth at the UnderDog Gallery.
Our own cover interpretation of David Bowie’s ‘The London Boys’ received radio play on the latest Chaos Theory Radio Show where Kunal was joined by Alan Pride for a selection of cool tunes! It was also aired on the Dexter Bentley Show Resonance FM and our Bowie’s cover of ‘Win’ was aired, again on Dexter’s ‘The Day Before’ , a tribute to David which also featured an extract from Mary Finnigan’s book ‘Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab’ plus an interview with her; we were deeply touched by Mary’s words for Raf and O who introduced us on the show. And lastly, Raf and O’s Magic from our latest album Portal that was mastered at Cage studios is included in a new free to download compilation ‘Cage 24’ by Martin Bowes from Attrition, pioneers of darker electronica.
For fresh up to date news join our Raf and O social media pages, FB and Twitter and watch this space!
Raf and O xx
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Electronic Sound Reviews Portal, Raf and O Cover Scott Walker, Bowie Reflections, Italian Summer, Live on Radio and Magic on Video, Halloween DJ’s and other outings.
December 18, 2016 § Leave a comment
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Well, this year is “almost” over and before the new one begins we thought we’d endeavour to bring you news, thoughts, collection and recollections of the last 4 months and this will include the playlist for a special dj set we did at this year’s Kaparte Oxjam. In July we launched our new album ‘PORTAL’ (available ‘HERE‘) at the wonderful St James The Less in Pimlico (see previous blog). It has now been reviewed on Electronic Sound Magazine!
“Raf and O specialise in floaty and delicate musical paintings. Raf’s dreamy vocals leading the way but more often than not melting into the instrumentation. The highlights include a track based on the words of Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 62’ and a version of David Bowie’s ‘Win’ which is almost unrecognisable and utterly charming. All in all, this is beautiful stuff.”
Push, ELECTRONIC SOUND
(See picture below for the whole review).
We also launched an EP containing two tracks from Portal and two tracks with Raf and O working alongside electronicist and Grace Jones’s collaborator Robert Logan (available HERE).
Now, the latest! Raf and O have covered the very beautiful Scott Walker’s ‘Such a Small Love’ as part of ‘Plastic Palace People’, an exclusive streamable and downloadable album curated by God Is In The TV Zine! We’re thoroughly proud to offer this Seasonal gift, which we recorded in Florence for your festive digestive. Listen and free download below.
The portal will lead us into 2017. 2016 has been a very strange year, a lot of crazy things happening and a lot of people left us David Bowie included. A very recent trip to the wonderful Lazarus Musical brought forward this consciousness, stirring up feelings and sadness, a shared feeling by Bowie fans across the world. But Lazarus is also a celebration of his artistry and alongside Blackstar, the inner workings of a man facing up to his own mortality. This summer we returned to Beckenham for Bowie’s Beckenham Oddity (formerly Memory Of A Free Festival and Beckenham Free Festival) and it was a complete joy/ honour to perform again as Raf and O. Huge love unified all performers musicians, organisers workers and the crowd, all celebrating the Starman. Lovely contributions by many, a real pleasure to share the stage with Maggi Ronson and the band Jona Lewie, David Live, Clifford Slapper, Amory Kane and more. Thanks to all involved who contributed to make this day very special especially Wendy Faulkner who worked very hard in bringing this year’s festival together and it was brill catching up with Mary Finnigan again who organised the festival with Bowie in 1969. We’ve got some footage shot by the lovely Rhianna, that we’ll post soon, so watch out for that! Alongside new Raf and O material, our set included Bowie’s ‘Lady Grinning Soul’, ‘Win’ included in our last album ‘Portal’ and even a short rendition of ‘After All’.
This is us doing our thing captured beautifully by mister Gaz De Vere. Continues below.
Raf and O Live at Bowie’s Beckenham Oddity aka Memory Of A Free Festival © Gaz De Vere
A Starman in the sky. picture by O.
Since the festival, we traveled to Italy to do some writing and recording including our Scott Walker cover, played a few parties and the excellent Frame Live Club In La Spezia (see press above) on the Ligurian Coast where we were warmly welcomed and throughly enjoyed playing the show to such a receptive audience. Thanks to Alan Pride for keeping things running smooth and on our return to the UK we were kept fairly busy supporting TE Morris from Her Name Is Calla at Chaos Theory’s Whispers and Hurricanes, putting together a special Dj Set (see above) for this year’s Kaparte Oxjam at the Slaughtered Lamb and we played a live session on the Dexter Bentley’s Hello Goodbye show on Resonance FM alongside The Monochrome Set.
In the words of Dexter Bentley “the original post-punk / arch-pop pioneers The Monochrome Set, plus ethereal, futuristic folk duo Raf & O”.
And Monolith Cocktail also featured ‘Portal’ in the top albums of 2016.
Here below is the podcast Raf and O live on Resonance FM and following that is our live performance of ‘Magic’ from ‘Portal’ lovingly filmed and edited by Riff Underground and Peter Junge. Many thanks to them both and to Chaos Theory for this video.
And to bookend the year, Raf and O just performed at the Xmas edition of the one and only Scaledown in the heart of London. We have a few things brewing but for now wishing you all a peaceful, productive, engaging holiday and see you back in 2017.
Love
Raf and O X
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The Quietus Reviews ‘Time Machine’. Interviews / Session on Resonance FM, Ableton Live Expert + Feature on FACT.
May 31, 2014 § Leave a comment
May and June to be greetings!
We’re very honoured to have recently featured in The Quietus with an excellent review of our latest album ‘Time Machine’ by legendary music journalist David Stubbs:
‘There is a butterfly, acoustic delicacy about tracks like ‘Mad And Brilliant’, and yet also the deceptive, steel strength of spider silk in their complex weaving – Raf’s vocal ranges far and wide in her emotional and lyrical foragings…Freeze-frame any given second of this album and it’ll reveal a hive of pixellated, analogue activity’
David Stubbs, The Quietus
FACT Magazine have listed Raf and O’s ‘Squeezebox’ as one of the 36 best indietronica tracks! Taken from “Has The Air Gone Walking” debut 10” vinyl alongside Gagarin from 2008; to be on this fine selection we are indeed extremely pleased.
‘Superbohemian, super kooky…the sort of record that makes it feel like John Peel is still alive’
Joe Muggs, Fact Magazine
This month we’ve done a few interviews: Shout 4 music popped us some Q&A’s and we’ve also been featured on the Ableton Live Expert website with a video interview and a live in the studio performance of ‘Mad And Brilliant from the ‘Time Machine’ album. Martin Delaney came to film us and we spoke briefly about our Live set up. It was bright, fun to do and here it is!
(Continues below)
Meanwhile on the gig front, since launching our album at the fabulous Shoreditch Church (featured on David Bowie Official – see previous blog) we returned to Scaledown, where O’s bass made a rare appearance, closely followed by our very first gig in a record shop at Vinyl in Deptford, where we were bathed in psychedelic visuals courtesy of Punkvert VJs for the new Psyche Satyrday.
And to cap off the month, we popped into Resonance FM for a Live Radio Session on the excellent Dexter Bentley Hello Goodbye Show. Thoroughly enjoyed it! You can catch the podcast HERE where we are performing material from our latest album: You Made Me’,’Saturated Dreams’, ‘Lady Grinning Soul’and ‘The Fog’ with an interview.
Raf and O’s newly released LP ‘Time Machine’ is a hauntingly atmospheric, Folktronica masterpiece’
Dexter Bentley, Resonance FM
Our new ‘Time Machine’ Album and EP are available on the Bandcamp Page. Please support these independent releases by getting your copies HERE!
Raf and O
X
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Raf and O 
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